Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Marine geological studies were of extreme importance in providing the critical evidence for sea floor spreading and plate tectonics in the years following World War II. The deep ocean floor is the last essentially unexplored frontier and detailed mapping in support of economic ( petroleum and metal mining ), natural disaster mitigation, and ...
These three plates were joined at a migrating, or unstable, ridge-ridge-ridge (RRR) triple junction from which the Pacific plate began to grow 190 million years ago in an area east of the Mariana Trench; this area, known as the Pacific Triangle, is the oldest part of the Pacific plate and therefore the oldest ocean floor of the Pacific ...
The first discovered mid-ocean ridge was the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a spreading center that bisects the North and South Atlantic basins; hence the origin of the name 'mid-ocean ridge'. Most oceanic spreading centers are not in the middle of their hosting ocean basis but regardless, are traditionally called mid-ocean ridges.
Paleontologists have found matching dinosaur footprints on different continents 3,700 miles — and an ocean — apart. Preserved in mud and silt in what’s now Brazil and Cameroon, the 260 ...
Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading. (The rate at which new oceanic lithosphere is added to each tectonic plate on either side of a mid-ocean ridge is the spreading half-rate and is equal to half of the spreading rate). Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast, intermediate, or slow.
An oceanic core complex, or megamullion, is a seabed geologic feature that forms a long ridge perpendicular to a mid-ocean ridge. It contains smooth domes that are lined with transverse ridges like a corrugated roof. They can vary in size from 10 to 150 km in length, 5 to 15 km in width, and 500 to 1500 m in height.
Mid-ocean ridges with a spreading rate greater than or equal to 90 mm/year are considered to be fast-spreading ridges. Due to the large amounts magma being expelled from the asthenosphere in a relatively short period of time, these formations typically protrude much higher from the seafloor.
Anytime you find a fossil, park paleontologists recommend you photograph it, note the coordinates and tell a ranger so a paleontologist can examine the specimen. ... This is one of the most ...